6-Day Week Solar Calendar with common Muslim/Christian weekend
Introduction Perhaps you’re the kind of person who wants to help the environment and boost the economy at the same time. No? Well, then maybe you have a job, or go to school, or have a family member who does. Either way, you’ll want to stay with me on this. As we all know, there are some big problems with the current calendar, the so-called Gregorian calendar. It’s confusingly irregular, it hasn’t been updated since long before the Industrial Revolution, and it is just not designed to meet the needs of modern society. All the calendar’s shortcomings could be fixed with one fundamental change based on one simple idea: go to a six-day week composed of four weekdays and a regular 2-day weekend. There’s been talk about a “4-day workweek” for as long as I can remember, and we hear it mentioned a lot nowadays as a way to deal with high gas prices and employment concerns. But let’s face it, it’s just not going to happen. Not as long as a week is seven days long, that is. Nobody’s going to go for giving people a three-day weekend every single week. In economic terms, that’s just not sustainable. But what if the week was six days long? What if we were to eliminate a weekday (say, Saturday) in order to formulate a 6-day week? The 4-day workweek would then be institutionalized for everyone’s benefit, but the weekend doesn’t change! While we’re at it, I suggest we go ahead and address the irregular-month problem at the same time. The improved calendar would still have 12 months, only we’d make each month 30 or 31 days long. Days and years are based on regularly recurring astronomical events. There’s no changing the length of a year or a day. Weeks and months, however, are arbitrary groupings of days within the year. The month is only loosely based on one full cycle of the moon, and the week is just as arbitrary, scientifically speaking. Because weeks and months are man-made demarcations of time, they are things that can be freely messed with. We haven’t messed with weeks and months for a long time, but we could. Here’s what the new weeks and months would look like under the 6-day week plan. There you go. There’s your new-style months with 30/31 days, 5 weeks, 20 working days and 10/11 non-working days every single month. There will be 240 working days and 60 weekends within each year. Beyond the symmetry and intrinsic appeal, the most obvious benefit from the New Calendar would be the accelerated work week and increase in leisure time. The weekend would come around sooner every single week, and there would be 60 weekends per year, not 52. Any weekday could be eliminated, but Saturday is the best option (it will be explained later on). We’ve learned to live with the crazy relationship between calendar dates and days of the week, but all that complexity has been totally unnecessary. We don’t have to live that way anymore. As shown on the 6-Day Week Solar Calendar, the 1st of any month is a Sunday, and the 4th, 16th and 28th for example are Wednesdays. Who’d be for the new calendar? Well, workers, students, and families would certainly benefit from the shortened workweek and extra weekends. The travel and recreation industry would be all for it. The uniformity of the months would make scheduling and accounting tasks much easier. Business and commerce would realize huge benefits from all this regularity and from improvements in employee health and morale. We can also predict, with considerable confidence, that kids will immediately do a lot better in school. Aren’t more frequently repeated lessons better for learning things than are less-frequent, longer lessons? Of course they are. Another big benefit: We can predict, with considerable confidence, that kids will immediately do a lot better in school. Aren’t more frequently repeated lessons better for learning things than are less-frequent, longer lessons? Of course they are. The school year would be made up of fifty 4-day weeks instead of forty 5-day weeks. This will provide a natural framework for repetitive learning, and we can expect a corollary improvement in “student mean recall gradients” and things like that. This could be the most meaningful educational reform ever. Who’d be against the idea? Some employers might have a knee jerk reaction to the idea of their employees working fewer days a year. This is to be expected, but they’d come around if they saw that their attitude wasn’t good for their image or their bottom line. Corporations might argue that we should adopt a longer workday along with the New Calendar. That way, they might say, total hours worked in a year would be almost exactly the same as now. While many people would consider this a fair trade-off for all those additional days off, I’d rather not complicate our simple proposal with considerations that confuse the issue and threaten so time-honored a tradition as the 8-hour day. But in the same time the difference in number of working days between New Calendar and Gregorian Calendar is not really that big as it seems - as you will see further, you have make a trade-off for all additionally added national holidays or to assign them to weekend days. Thus there are exactly 240 working days within year. Now compare it with working calendars of some countries and you will see that the New Calendar has only slightly smaller number of working days. (ex. for year 2013 - 13 in case of England, 11 in case of California, 7 in case of both Germany and Russia). So basically there is no more than 1 extra free day per month, which is affordable for the world economy considering all the advantages New Calendar gives us. I suppose some fundamentalist religious groups would be hesitant to just up and eliminate the 7-day week. Things could get sticky if we run into strong objections based on the verbal literalism of the Old Testament. But remember: 60 weeks instead of 52 means 60 Sabbath Days instead of 52. I think we’ll be able to focus on that as a strong selling point. Religious organizations will certainly approve of the family friendliness and social welfare benefits resulting from the 4-day workweek. Also, because people would now have more time to stop and smell the roses, the 6-day week could actually be the impetus for a worldwide spiritual renewal. They might not see it at first, but the world’s religions would surely benefit from the change to a 6-day week. Further description 1st day of the year & leap year rule 1st day of the year (January 1) of the New Calendar is the day when Southern Solstice occurs according to NewUTCNew UTC = UTC + 45min. I propose to change prime meridian to the meridian 11°07'54.12 which is antipode of middle point between easternmost point of Asia and westernmost point of NorthAmerica. This prime meridian is a more precise version of . time. The rule of leap year is not mathematical, but based on astronomical observation. The year is leap when number of days between S. Solstice that marks its begging and S.Solstice that marks the beginning of the next year is 366. But still, leap years will occur once in 4 years (rarely once in 5) with no significant difference from Gregorian Calendar, however order of leap years may vary from Gregorian calendar. (ex. next leap year is 2015). Leap day is April 31. Structure of the calendar Year is divided in 12 months, each month having 30 or 31 days. Months having 31 days are: May, June, July, August and September. The reason for choosing these months is because of unequal time length of each season due to . It is important to note that Earth does not move at a constant speed in its elliptical orbit. Therefore the seasons are not of equal length: the times taken for the sun to move from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice, to the autumnal equinox, to the winter solstice, and back to the vernal equinox are roughly 92.8, 93.6, 89.8 and 89.0 days respectively. (These values slightly change over course of thousands years (picture from the right)). Each month is divided in 5 weeks having 6 days each. So there are 4 working days and 2 weekend days. The only exception is January (see Holidays section). In the months having 31 days, last day of the month is not counted as any weekday and it is a non-working day. There is exactly 20 working and 10(11) non-working days in every single month. Each month corresponds almost exactly to one astrological sign – April to Aries, May to Taurus and so on. Only few signs don’t correspond exactly to one month but the difference is not bigger than one day in any case. (This difference occurs because of irregularity of current Gregorian Calendar, so it can be easily ignored). Holidays Holidays differ from country to country, so they are not highlighted in this calendar. One worldwide holiday might be New Year, this is why 4 days in the first week of the year are highlighted as holidays. In this way we get a nice 8 day-New-Year-holiday each year (from December 30 till January 7). Christmas which is December 25th in Gregorian Calendar falls on January 5 in New Calendar, so it is within this 8 day-New-Year-holiday too. Thus New Year and Christmas will be celebrated within same 8-day long holiday, but New Year being celebrated before Christmas. Assigning 4 days to New-Year-holiday without compensating these days would leave January in a uniqie situation with only 16 working and 14 non-working days. In order to compensate these holiday days every Friday of January (except the first Friday of the year) will be a working day. Thus, the number of working and non-working days in January will be same as in all other months. If a specific country doesn't celebrate New Year and Christmas then it will ignore all of the said above about January, and January will look no different than other months. Example of January should be followed in all such cases for any specific national holiday of each country (ex. Easter in Christian world, Nowruz in Iran etc). The main principle in rearranging of order of working and non-working days is the rule that each month must have exactly 20 working days (neither more, nor less). Meanwhile, all other one-day national holidays must be reassigned or traded-off with weekend days, thus not creating any extra non-working day. Names of the weekdays, months and year number It is up to each country to decide upon month names. It can be standard names (January–December), some other national month names, or even zodiac sign names which will correspond for each month in this Calendar. Year number could remain the same in order to not create further confusion. As it was already mentioned the weekday which will be dropped in this calendar is Saturday. There is a strong reason behind it. As we all know the two most widespread religions in the world are Christianity and Islam. Their holy days respectively are Sunday and Friday. Dropping Saturday and making both Friday and Sunday non-working days will solve the problem that many Muslim countries today are using an alternative workweek (Sunday to Thursday, or Saturday to Wednesday) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#Islamic_countries). Thus we will have a common workweek from Monday to Thursday for both Christian and Muslim countries. There are two main reasons for choosing Sunday as a first day of a week. Firstly, this will ensure that all Solstice and Equinox dates fall on non-working days, thus the holidays associated with these dates will also fall around non-working days. Secondly, this is useful when we divide months in 2 or 3 (in periods of 15 or 10 days) because we recieve close number of working and non-working days in each division. (ex. if we divide a 30 day month in 2 we will get 10 working and 5 non-working days in each half Conversion from Gregorian Calendar to 6-Day Week Solar Calendar With the availability of modern day software it would be no problem to convert all the dates from Gregorian Calendar to corresponding dates in New Calendar. All major dates and birthdays would be celebrated on the date corresponding to that date of Gregorian Calendar in New Calendar. (For example my birthday is November 13 in Gregorian Calendar which corresponds to November 22 in New Calendar (you have to check exact dates for that year in order to calculate it precisely)) so I will celebrate my birthday on November 22 in New Calendar). Recapitulating benefits As we can see the benefits from using new calendar are overwhelming: This calendar uses nice numbers – 12 months per year means that these months can be divided in 4 quarters (which is not possible in alternative calendars which have 13 months). Months have 30 or 31 days (no more February with 28 days). Each week has even number of days which is beneficial for scheduling issues. For example a person can schedule his gym program in order to go to gym exactly once in 2 days - Monday/Wednesday/Friday. The benefit for accounting issues is the fact that each month has exactly 20 working days making each quarter to have exactly 60 working days, totaling exactly 240 working days per year. This calendar is in harmony with astrological events (ex. day length will increase in the first half of the year and decrease in the second half; Solstices and Equinoxes occur either on last or first day of the month (but rarely Southward equinox will fall on October 2)). This calendar has a common workweek from Monday to Thursday for both Christian and Muslim countries. No new paper calendars have to be printed each year because order of days does not change from year to year. All holidays and activities can be planned with no need to modify them each year. In conclusion, this calendar resolves a number of issues of current Gregorian Calendar # It is astrologically precise being in harmony with Solstice and Equinox dates. # Common workweek from Monday to Thursday for both Christian and Muslim countries. # Order of days does not change from year to year. # Same number of weeks in each quarter and month. # Same number of workdays in each quarter, month and even regular half-month. # Number of days in a regular week is even. Implementation issues The biggest and almost only real obstacle for implementation of this calendar can be the need to break continuous use of a seven-day week. Some conservative religious organizations and people may be against calendar reform due to this reason. But as it was mentioned above we will have 60 Fridays and 60 Sundays per year for Muslims and Christians (instead of 52) if we implement calendar reform. Another minor disadvantage can be the time needed for adaption which is valid for any change. But as it was mentioned above the availability of modern day software can diminish these difficulties. Further, simplicity and advantages of the New Calendar will make people to get used with it, the New Calendar having almost no other disadvantage. Category:Proposed calendars Category:Reformed Gregorian calendars Category:6-day week Category:Astronomic leap rule Category:30-31-day month calendars Category:12-month calendars Category:Week starts Sunday